Dark Symmetry
by Veriform
Summary: Darth Malak struggles with the path he has chosen and his own fragmented ego as he confronts Revan, his former lover and mentor, aboard the Starforge. Dark Side. COMMENT.


Revan does not wear the mask, the one she took as her new self from the dead soil of Cathar, where the wars began. Her blue eyes are cold. She wears her dark hair long. It frames the oval-shaped and strangely innocent face I know so well. Her full lips are pressed into a thin, hard line. Her fingers are white on the hilt of her lightsaber. "Bandon is dead," she says. Her voice is low and sweet, like dark honey. It echoes in the dead, flat silence of the Starforge's bridge. "I killed your apprentice."

It is a face I have seen a thousand times, a nightmare I cannot escape.

"Yes," I say. "I have felt it." There is such arrogance in my voice, such sickening pretension. It is a game we played often, at the end. A habit born of my jealousy for a genius I could never possess.

"Was it he you ordered to fire on my ship?"

I hesitate for a beat, but there is no point in lying. I know what she intends. I know nothing will change her course so late in the game. "I did it myself."

My false jaw aches, its edges still cold and uncomfortable against my ruined face after all these years I have worn it. Her eyes drink mine, shading from bright blue to cancerous yellow.

She moves toward me, slim and graceful. There is a slight sway to her walk, like a dancer's. I stand in the shadow of one of my captive Jedi, his body suspended lifelessly in Kolto. She is below me, moving slowly toward the ramp between the bridge's upper level and its wide circular floor. I cling to the power of the Starforge like a child at its mother's breast. I feel its dark heartbeat pulsing in time with my own. I am a king here, enthroned in corruption and hunger. Factories five hundred decks beneath my feet churn out marching columns of war droids and endless streams of warships. The Republic's fleet is burning in the cold void over Rakata, pounded by relentless waves of the Starforge's relentless iron children.

The souls of the captive Jedi are screaming in the Force. I steel myself against them and take my lightsaber from my belt where it has hung since I constructed it at the end of the Mandalorian Wars, a new weapon for a new life. Then, as in so much I have done, I worked in imitation of her. Mentor, lover, friend and confidante. Even now, standing tall above her with the Galaxy kneeling at my feet, I am in her shadow.

She stops at the base of the ramp, staring up at me.

"This attempt is futile," I say. The words have become rote recitation in my tongueless, toothless mouth. I must play the Dark Lord, or else I will collapse like an empty cloak. I palm my lightsaber's ignition plate and the blade snaps to life, a meter-long cylinder of hissing red light. "You cannot defeat me, not here where my power waxes strongest. This time, Revan, you will not escape."

She moves faster than I would have believed possible, her black robes flaring out around her as she flies through the air in a rushing leap. I spin aside and she lands easily where I stood, her violet lightsaber impaling only air. Her eyes find mine again. She smiles. We dance, sabers crackling and humming with furious power as our blades cross and our bodies move.

I am angry. She is faster than I am or ever was, even after all her body has been through. Even after the destruction the Jedi visited on her mind. I parry her savage thrust and see her lying naked with her back to me. My fingers rest on her bare hip. Her skin is warm. She lunges, jabbing smoothly. I throw out a hand and catch her in my anger, in the rage she taught me to surrender to. She flies back down the ramp and strikes the deck, hard. She bounces twice and scrambles to her feet, saber reigniting. I am upon her with a scream of fury and our sabers clash. "Fool!" I shriek, my voice crackling mechanically. "I am more powerful than you! I hold the Galaxy by the throat!"

My words are empty. We both know the truth of it, the weakness that eats at the core of me. She retreats, defending with precision and restraint. I am a wild animal, hammering at her pristine technique with the raw hatred of my ruined self. She leaps sideways, her hair flying, and I feel the curve of her warm breast in my palm. I stagger, trying to gain my bearings, and she flips over me. I feel white-hot agony as her saber's tip emerges from my belly. I give vent to a ragged cry of pain and lurch away, the saber sliding back through burned and ruined flesh. I call to the Jedi in their Kolto tanks. I am panicked, weak and stumbling. I fall to my knees, wheezing through my false jaw.

This is not the way it ends.

Power floods me. I drink it greedily, siphoning the dregs of the captive Jedi's life. I am a leech, a parasite. I am on my feet, turning on Revan with an echoing roar. She brings her saber up just in time to keep my blow from taking off her head. I burn her ear, still screaming my hatred at her face. It is my hatred that gives me strength. Jealousy. Loathing. Fear. I feel the Force pounding in my veins and know that now, if only for an instant, I am truly the Dark Lord of the Sith. I feel no pride in this. Revan knows her hatred. It fuels her, gives her strength. My hatred rules me with an iron fist.

"You're weak," I spit. My saber slashes her robes and leaves an angry black line along her thigh. She makes no sound. Her face betrays no hint of pain. I feel her lips against my own, taste the salt of her tears. I feel her tongue in my mouth, and I see her ship as it explodes beneath the cannons of my own _Leviathan. _I recall the moment the order to fire left my ruined face. Sorrow. Regret. I smash her lightsaber aside and slash her across the chest, melting a red-yellow line into her black breastplate.

Revan's hands rise. I leap at her, saber high, and lightning springs from her gloved fingers. My perception is transformed into pain. I breathe molten steel. I see fire. My muscles twitch and jerk as I crash to the deck, screaming in agony. She breaks me.

And it is over. I get unsteadily to my feet. Smoke rises from my cape and from my skin. She is weary, her face drawn. I cut at her and she blocks. And then she is gone, moving too swiftly for the eye to follow. I hear her footsteps, light and swift. I feel her move beneath me in our bed, her body warm and hungry against mine. Turning to face her, I wonder if she remembers. Her lightsaber slides past mine and stabs me through the shoulder. I gasp and drop my weapon. It clatters to the deck and I am running, my legs watery and unsure. I sob, my breath rattling in my chest.

The Jedi are stirring in their Kolto tanks. One is dead, floating with his face pressed grotesquely against the thick glass. Another twitches, fingers opening and closing. I think, as I steal his life and make it mine, that he has a name and once, perhaps, was loved. I turn and summon my lightsaber to my hand. It returns and I ignite it just in time to block Revan's overhand blow. She fights now with both hands on the hilt of her saber. I sidestep around her, my charred and tattered red cape flaring behind me. She twists and I lunge at her, but she is smoke on the wind. She flees and I follow, bounding up onto the bridge's upper walkway. I see what she intends a moment before her blade sinks to the hilt into one of the Kolto tanks. The Jedi within jerks and then relaxes, receding into the Force.

"No!" I scream, and bound through the air again to land beside her. My lightsaber chops only air. She is gone, cloak streaming, and her saber finds another of the Jedi. I send lightning racing after her, letting my terror fuel my connection to the Force. She blocks it and slashes a third tank as she passes it, heading for a fourth. I move, interposing myself, and catch her saber on my own as it descends. Her expression is serene. She is the Master.

I am the Apprentice.

Her Force push strikes me in the chest. I fly backward and strike a broken tank with enough force to drive the breath from my lungs. Helpless, I watch as she impales the last of my captive Jedi. I can feel the Starforge shutting down, its engines rumbling hungrily. I tell myself that there are other Jedi, that they will fuel the grand space station's hungers and I will be invincible. Revan regards me across the space between us. Twenty meters of bare decking and cold, dead filtered air. I send lightning at her from my outstretched hand. My fury is hot behind my eyes and in my chest, where my heart beats. She catches it on her saber, but its crackling bolts crawl down the weapon's hilt. She screams and drops her weapon as my power burns her, lifts her from her feet and forces her up and back against the wall. Her heels drum against the metal wall of the bridge. She writhes.

I have her now. I am in command, Master of the Dark Side. I let the lightning fade but keep her pinned against the wall, and I begin to squeeze. Revan squirms, her face slowly turning blue. I feel her ribs creak, crushed by my Force grip. I make a fist. It is dramatic, the sort of histrionic gesture she always hated.

"Malak, please!"

Her scream is naked and vulnerable, a ragged wail of need and anguish. I release her, shocked and terrified. What have I done? She strikes the deck in a tangled heap, ashen-faced and wheezing for breath. Shakily, bracing herself against the wall, she gets to her feet. I remember moving inside her, teeth gritted at the pain and pleasure of it as her low, rough voice whispered in my ear. She leaps at me. Her lightsaber flies through the air at her command and slaps into her palm, igniting just as she lands before me. She plunges the burning blade through my stomach. I feel the white-hot blade destroy my spine and rip through flesh, muscle and cloth before emerging from my back. I choke.

She lets me fall. I am cold and the descent takes a long time. At last the back of my skull connects with the deck and I see bursts of color. Time passes. I see myself, whole and uncorrupted, as I kiss Revan above the ruined world of Malachor. I see the bed we shared aboard her ship, the rumpled sheets and sweaty bodies moving in a frantic rhythm. Each of us clinging to the other, though I needed her more than she has ever needed anyone or anything. I see the moment her lightsaber steals my jaw, the bitterness that has eaten me from within since that day. I walk beside her down the corridor of the _Leviathan_, speaking through the iron filter of my vocabulator. I wonder idly what my voice sounded like before I wore this travesty on my wreck of a face. I can no longer remember.

Revan kneels beside me and I feel her bare fingers slide to the hidden catches on my jaw. I raise a hand to try to stop her, but she brushes it aside. I begin to cry. Hot tears slide down my ravaged cheeks. "Don't," I rasp, and somewhere I find the strength to push myself up onto my elbows. I cannot feel my legs. Revan's fingers slide from my face.

"Why?" she whispers. Her yellow eyes are wide, searching. "Let me see you. Please."

"You...do see me," I gasp through the melting anguish in my belly. "This...this is what I have made of myself. I am your...imitation, your shadow...self. My...life...is over. Perhaps it...n-never truly began." I feel a surge of bitterness and devastation. I have traded away so much for the power I am losing. It slides between my fingers and out of reality, and I cannot bring myself to clutch at it. I let go of my hatred and my anger. I remember what it is to feel the Force. "This...is what...I have m-made...of myself. This mask...is...truer...than my...face."

She slips an arm around me as the strength goes out of my limbs. I sag against her, too weak to breathe or laugh or scream. "I tried...to be...you," I rasp, and my words are poison drawn from the wound of my life. I am ebbing away into purity. "I am nothing."

Her tears fall on the cold metal of my jaw.

I do not feel them.


End file.
